Nancy Kissel, dubbed the ‘milkshake murderer’ for one of Hong Kong’s most notorious homicides, was back in court Friday to challenge her life sentence for drugging her banker husband and bludgeoning him to death.
Kissel, now aged 53, lost an appeal in 2014 against a conviction for serving Robert Kissel – a senior executive at Merrill Lynch – a sedative-laced strawberry milkshake before clubbing him to death with a lead ornament in their luxury home in Hong Kong in 2003.
She is currently serving a life sentence at Hong Kong’s high-security Tai Lam Centre for Women.
American murderess: Nancy Kissel, 53, dubbed the ‘milkshake murderer’, arrives at Hong Kong’s High Court on Friday for a judicial review hearing after challenging her life sentence
Notorious case: Kissel (pictured left in 2005) was convicted during her 2011 retrial of serving husband Robert (right) a drug-laced strawberry milkshake and clubbing him to death with a lead statuette
Sporting bobbed hair and glasses, Kissel took copious notes throughout the judicial review hearing into her case at Hong Kong’s High Court on Friday.
The woman’s defense lawyers challenged a decision last year by the government’s Long-term Prison Sentences Review Board, which they said refused an application for conditional release or to recommend a determinate sentence.
The board makes suggestions to Hong Kong’s chief executive about inmates it deems suitable to be released before the end of an imposed jail term.
Kissel’s attorney Edward Fitzgerald argued that the mother-of-three was entitled to know what length of time the board would deem ‘sufficient’ before considering releasing her from detention early.
It was ‘cruel’ to repeatedly allow a prisoner to go in front of the board without knowing where they stood, said Fitzgerald, pointing out that a life sentence does not always mean life behind bars.
The hearing followed a writ filed by Kissel’s legal team last year which said the review board had ‘wrongly’ refused to shorten her sentence.
Kissel, seen above in 2005, claimed she had endured physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her Merrill Lynch banker husband, with whom she had three children
Robert Kissel, a senior executive at Merrill Lynch, had moved his family to Hong Kong in 1998
‘Given… the applicant’s demonstration of remorse and repentance, the respondent acted unreasonably,’ the writ said, referring to the board.
In a jailhouse interview in November 2014, Kissel said she had no regrets over her husband’s death.
‘I can’t spend my time explaining the unexplainable,’ she told Bloomberg. ‘I can’t undo something I never understood.’
The review judges said they would hand down a decision at a later date.
The Michigan-born Kissel was first convicted of murder and handed a life sentence in 2005.
Hong Kong’s top court overturned the conviction in February 2010, citing legal errors, and ordered a fresh hearing. But she was convicted again in 2011 and then lost the final appeal in 2014.
At her 2011 retrial, Kissel sobbed as she told the jury she had endured physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her husband Robert.
She maintained she acted in self-defense and offered to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Kissel’s attorney Edward Fitzgerald argued that the mother-of-three (pictured in 2010) was entitled to know what length of time would be deemed ‘sufficient’ before considering an early release
Prosecutors accused Kissel of rolling up her husband’s body in a carpet and covering his head with plastic after after striking him with an eight-pound metal statuette in their luxury ocean view home at the hillside Parkview apartment complex, where they had lived with their children since 1998.
She left the body in the bedroom for days before hiring workmen to carry it to a storeroom, they said.
Prosecutors also argued that Kissel stood to gain up to $18million from the death of her wealthy husband, saying she planned to run away with a television repairman with whom she admitted having an affair in the US.
The couple’s children – a son and two daughters – were sent to live with their paternal aunt near Seattle after the murder.
Kissel said in the 2014 interview that she has hardly seen them since then.